The Love Argument

Charles Danten, former veterinarian

The King of the Urban Jungle

The notion that other species should have the same rights as humans is another dangerous fallacy. In the United States and elsewhere, in the name of equality for every species, parks and protected ecological sites, for example, are trampled and desecrated by pet owners who feel they have every right. On a good day in San Francisco’s Fort Funston, reports journalist Michael Schaffer in his book, One Nation Under Dog, there can be up to 400 dogs off-leash, spoiling the home of endangered species like the bank swallow or the western snowy plover. In the name of love and anti-specism, Peter Singer advocates everywhere are waging “dog wars” to gain free access for their dogs to rare and protected land.

Near my home there is a small, pristine forest, a protected national treasure, where dogs are admitted only on-leash and where walking outside the trails is prohibited. Unfortunately, a number of dog owners use it as an exercise park and a toilet for their pets. On one occasion, I saw as many as half a dozen dogs running loose in the woods, barking, trampling rare plants, and scaring birds away. The trails are often littered with feces. Plastic bags containing excrement are thrown in the underbrush and left hanging on the entrance gates. Whenever I have asked dog owners to keep their dogs on-leash and respect the law, I have been treated with contempt and derision, even verbal threats and physical intimidation. One day, an aggressive pet owner, out of her wits after I had told her to put her dogs on leashes, actually shoved my sister out of her way as she continued along the trail. The comment I most often hear is: “If you don’t love animals, why don’t you move to another neighbourhood!” I’ve complained many times to City Hall, and several of my letters on the subject were published in local newspapers, but to no avail. The love argument is a powerful one.

Of course, there are selfish reasons behind this unruly behaviour. Pet owners feel guilty about locking their animals up most of the day while they go about living their lives. Affection-slavery comes at a moral price. They find some solace by treating them like "kings," hiring a dog walker or trainer, buying their pets an expensive brand of food, playing ball with them on the week-ends, or letting them loose for a few minutes in the woods or with their own kind. Some make these outings into social events. But everyone knows the road to hell is paved with good intentions.

Animal Rights, Barbarism with a Smiley Face

Charles Danten

I argue that animal rights, along with no-kill shelters, unscientific vaccination, animal activism, and “medical training” of pets to lessen the stress of manipulations, for example, are some of the ways our society validates the use of animals as a commodity. 

Indeed, humans are clever at finding ways to rationalize and put a smile on the self-serving, unnecessary, wasteful, cruel, and aggressive exploitations of those they metaphorically call their children. 

In a world of consumers, everything has a price, including peace of mind. 

Emancipation of animals within the status quo is meaningless. No domesticated animal will ever be free to exercise its rights. An emancipated domestic animal is by definition a contradiction in terms, an oxymoron. 

According to Lawyer Anne-Marie Bourgeois Sohm, lecturer at the Faculty of Law of Clermont-Ferrand, France, the need to give rights to domesticated animals is a false one:

Would this change [giving rights to animals] really make a difference in the animal condition? Would the end justify the problems caused by the change in our traditional legal structure? We must, alas, answer in the negative. The animal, the beneficiary of such rights, can never exercise them, it is his master, or a body authorized to do so in its place, which does so. However, in the present context, it is already the case. (1)

In the context of our legal systems, animals will always come last. We all know it is easier to write laws than to enforce them. Where will we get the resources to do so? Will we have a special animal brigade, the equivalent of the Miami vice squad? Come on. 

The best example is the multiplication of violent crimes in our society, or the persistence of behaviours contrary to the law, like drug usage, pedophilia, and prostitution, despite stricter laws, closer surveillance, and more and more severe punishments. The difficulty involved in getting people to treat animals decently is less surprising when we look at how people behave towards each other. 

Putting the focus on animal rights will serve only to make lawyers richer and animal activists more passionate.

Furthermore, by perpetuating the fallacies described in this blog, animal rights - and adoption for that matter - does more to nullify the wanted effect of saving animals and to amplify the dreaded effect of consumerism, with all its inseparable atrocities. 

The intention is undoubtedly sincere in a number of people who are truly concerned for good reasons by animal suffering, but it is legitimate to ask if this will to humanize animals is not diverted from its true purpose for business and ideological reasons in order to prevent any hindering to consumption and to impose on the public ideas and customs contrary to the laws of nature and common sense.

The industry and animal rights advocates, which are a kind of fifth column financed by private donors and the wealthy multinationals that control the market, are seeking, for example, to pass a bylaw that would prevent Quebec apartment building owners not only to prohibit pets, but to expel the owners of delinquent pets. 

Is this really out of goodness of the heart? There’s reason to doubt it, as no action to help animals where it really counts, at the root, is truly taken. For understandable reasons, from a commercial point of view, all the preventive and corrective measures taken are aimed at issues adversely affecting demand, consumerism, and serving at the same time to inflate sales of the many services offered by this commercial sector such as dog training, psychological assessments, etc. 

In other words, just as certain countries use human rights and democracy as an excuse to invade, steal the natural resources, and enslave with debt the people of countries that don't think or behave the required way or to impose by force on their citizens unpopular policies, such as massive immigration, multiculturalism, LGBT ideas, and globalization, (2) animal rights activists and other animal activists use a humanistic and progressive rhetoric to smother criticism and impose and defend practices and ideas that are not in the interest of the public, animals, and the environment.

Emancipation of domestic animals within the status quo may be meaningless, as explained above, but emancipation for animals in general would have meaning only if it referred to granting animals the right to live out their lives without interference or exploitation. 

This does not mean that pets should be set free. Few of these victims of affection-slavery could survive on their own. It means that once a pet dies of a natural death, its master can choose out of a eureka type of comprehension not to enslave another animal.

People who love animals should not own pets.

Bibliographie

Budiansky, Stephen (1998). If a lion could talk. The Free Press.

Bernardina, Sergio Dalla (2006). « Épilogue en forme de satire. Du commerce avec les bêtes chez les Terriens civilisés. » L’éloquence des bêtes. Métaillé.

Hoffer, Eric (1951). The true believer. Thoughts on the nature of masse movements. Harper and Row.

West, Patrick (2004). Conspicuous compassion. Why sometimes it’s really cruel to be kind. Civitas.

Reference

1. Anne-Marie Sohm-Bourgeois, La personnification de l’animal: une tentation à repousser, Recueil Dalloz Sirey, 7^e Cahier, 1990.

2. Kerry Bolton, The Tyranny of Human Rights, Antelope Hill Publishing, 2022.